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This is the last part in the 'SAFe® IP Iteration' series. Read part one here and part two here if you missed them. In part three, Tom goes back to address the original objections to whether the IP Iteration is Agile.

Coming back to the original objections

Let's go back to our original objections and deal with them now that we understand why SAFe is constructed the way that it is.

"But this just isn't Agile! Why can't we just keep Sprinting?".

Some people really dislike the "break" from the cycle of Sprints and view the IP Iteration as an ineffective tradeoff that isn't needed because all of the above activities can be worked into each Sprint for each team. This is essentially the single-team Scrum view that life should be an endless series of Sprints.

The normal response to this is to point out that there's a bigger programme picture, that the team is part of a team-of-teams and time needs to be spent on those activities, and that all of this rests on the same PDCA principles that underpin Scrum.

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This is the second part in a blog series talking about the IP Iteration that happens as part of the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®). Missed the first part? Read it here.

What's the typical structure of an IP Iteration and why is it like this?

SAFe marks the boundaries of its PIs (Program Increments) through the IP Iteration. This is normally a two-week period during which the following activities are scheduled:

1. Completion of work

There is some contingency allowed in case that teams are very close to finishing their work in the current PI and can finish. The official guidance is up to one week, in practice less is desirable or this becomes a "buffer" teams will depend on.

There is also an allowance here for release activities - these will depend on whether major releases are aligned with PIs or not (a business decision, not required by SAFe) and the nature of the major release process: whether it is complicated and time-consuming or a simple "button-push".

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"But this just isn't Agile! Why can't we just keep Sprinting?"."We don't have time for this, we've got too much work to do!"."Planning together is worthless because everything changes soon afterwards.""It is boring and a waste of my time, I'm here to write code".

These are just some of the things we regularly hear from clients who are learning the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®). The part of SAFe they seem to struggle with most is the IP Iteration (sometimes called the 'bridge') that handles the switch between two adjacent PIs (Program Increments). This is probably the most misunderstood part of SAFe and the one that is abused the most in practice.

Let's start by unpicking why SAFe works like this - because there are good reasons that cannot be trivially dismissed.

The Plan Do Check Adjust/Act (PDCA) Cycle

First of all, most Agile methods are based on the PDCA cycle. (Note that there are alternatives to PDCA such as John Seddon's Check-Plan-Do. However they are all ultimately variations on the same activities, just with different emphasis.)

PDCA is a basic improvement cycle that can be applied individually, to a team, to a programme or a wider organisation.

Planning - planning work/activity to do.Doing - doing the work/activity.Check - evaluating how we did.Adjust(/Act) - improvement actions to get a better result next time.

Sports work like this. Before the game, we plantactics and strategy. Then we play the game (do). After the game, we review our performance: what went well and badly and why (check). Finally, we take learnings from this review and work to improve for future games (adjust/act).

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*This post is part of the series ‘SAFe Practice Tips’, which aims to offer helpful advice to anyone using SAFe.

Continuous Deployment

This is the final part to the CI/CD blog series where I discuss continuous integration, delivery & deployment, and the differences between them but also how they relate to one another. You can find the first and second part, discussing Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery. The last practice we discuss is Continuous Deployment (CDep).

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*This post is part of the series ‘SAFe Practice Tips’, which aims to offer helpful advice to anyone using SAFe.

This is the first part to the CI/CD blog series where I discuss continuous integration, delivery & deployment, and the differences between them but also how they relate to one another. This blog will help with enabling a smooth continuous journey for your team. The first practice we discuss is Continuous integration.

Where do I start?

First of all, CI/CD is not one thing. When people start using the term "CI/CD" they are merging different things together, and while they are related (you can't have CD without CI) they are quite different in scope. The CD acronym further complicates things by being ambiguous (see below).

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*This post is part of the series ‘SAFe Practice Tips’, which aims to offer helpful advice to anyone using SAFe.

Here is the final part of the SAFe PI Planning Tips series where I discuss the Planning Retrospective. This is the final activity of the Program Increment (PI) Planning event. If you haven’t checked out our previous Tips of the SAFe Practice series you can check them out here: Part 1 and Part 2

“The RTE leads a brief retrospective for the PI planning event to capture what went well, what didn’t, and what can be done better next time.” - Scaled Agile Framework

My experience with the PI is that, whilst energising and exhilarating, it also exhausting! By the time you get to the final confidence vote, people are ‘done’! They just want to get home.

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*This post is part of the series ‘SAFe Practice Tips’, which aims to offer helpful advice to anyone using SAFe.

Here is the 2nd part of the SAFe® Practice Tips series, where I discuss Management Problem Solving, including thoughts from other SAFe practitioners. Also, I explain confidence voting and how the team can do this to help meet their objectives for the PI. If you haven’t checked out the previous parts of the series - read Tip 1 here and Tip 2 here.

As mentioned last time, PI Planning is essential to SAFe. If you are not doing PI Planning, you are not doing SAFe. These tips will enable you to do your PI planning in a better way.

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*This post is part of the series ‘SAFe Practice Tips’, which aims to offer helpful advice to anyone using SAFe.

As a SAFe® Program Consultant Trainer (SPCT) I can’t remember how many PI Planning events I facilitated and attended last year. However, what I do know is that this is a seminal event in SAFe, which aims to create alignment with the Teams, the Product Management, the Architects and Business Owners.

“Program Increment (PI) Planning is a cadence-based, face-to-face event that serves as the heartbeat of the Agile Release Train (ART), aligning all the teams on the ART to a shared mission and Vision.”

PI Planning is essential to SAFe -If you are not doing PI Planning, you are not doing SAFe.

Over the last 2 years, I have been experimenting with different techniques and practices which I thought I would share with you. The first one is regarding Business Context and Team Space

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As a SAFe® Program Consultant Trainer, I have launched many Agile Release Trains (ARTs) over the last two years in a variety of industries and countries. Every time, I look to try something new (an experiment) to see whether there is a better way of doing things.

So, through a series of blogs I am going to share some of those experiments that I have found really useful. Perhaps try them out for yourself and let me know how you get on.

Let’s start by looking at the Inspect and Adapt workshop which, after the PI Planning, is probably the most important event; it is where we remember Principle #12 from the Agile Manifesto:

“At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behaviour accordingly.”